


the mirror crack'd from side to side

by satellites (brella)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Medieval, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-11
Updated: 2013-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-23 02:56:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/921180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/satellites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Ladye Lydia is a curse, they say. Whither she screams, death will surely follow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the mirror crack'd from side to side

**Author's Note:**

> _She left the web, she left the loom,_  
>  She made three paces thro' the room,  
> She saw the water-lily bloom,  
> She saw the helmet and the plume,  
> She look'd down to Camelot.  
> Out flew the web and floated wide;  
> The mirror crack'd from side to side;  
> "The curse is come upon me," cried  
> The Lady of Shalott.

When the Ladye Lydia climbs to the top of her stone castle’s tallest turret and screams, it’s winter for a fortnight and death patters with dancing feet across the valleys and the mountains. 

Stiles had never been fit enough to be a knight, no matter how fiercely he dreamed of it when he was a child and he would help his father polish his chain mail before the man rode off to war, so he is only a squire for Sir Scott, the Good-Hearted, and he has trouble carrying around so many heavy swords, and he trips when he’s lugging the tack and the lances about, but he never lets a speck of dirt reach Scott’s battered helm. Scott is indeed a good-hearted one, with his brown eyes and his clemency and his inability to ever feel rage, and Stiles has known him since they were both little boys running through the forest and the poppies and the wolfsbane, since they would bring home frogs and try to talk the Ladye Lydia into kissing them. 

That had been before the Ladye Lydia had begun to scream, a piercing and skin-scratching sound, from every tower and wall, until armies fell at her feet and ravens swarmed through her red, red hair. There are those who believe she should be burned, and those who believe she is a curse upon the kingdom that had once idolized her and her verdant eyes and smile that seemed to be made of stars, but Stiles has never believed such a thing: he believes she is something enchanted, something extraordinary, and if she is truly one of the aes sídhe, who has clawed her way up from the ground with her teeth and her nails and her unblemished white knees (the ones he had seen when he had stumbled upon her disrobing before plunging into a pond in the woods), then he would not mind dying by her night-and-perfume-stained hand, dragged down to the filthiest depths beneath the fairy mounds. 

They keep her locked up now, and they only bring her out when they want their enemies to die, and she is watched by the Ladye Allison of the enemy Argent kingdom, and Stiles does not see her anymore. Scott tells him it is for the best, for she will descend upon them with her dark magic if they are not careful, but Stiles knows that he does not feel as he must pretend he does, for Scott hates and fears no one, not even the dark knight Peter who slew his family. 

It is Lydoíche tonight, and the moon is full and white, and the fog is rolling in from the snowy mountains, and Stiles will leave with Scott and his clan of knights – Sir Isaac, the Meek; Sir Boyd, the Bold; Sir Jackson, the Ferocious – to explore the uncharted part of the woods at sunrise. They will be gone for many more full moons, he knows.

He stands, barefoot, at the foot of Lydia’s tower, in his most faded tunic and his most frayed linen pants, with a scab on his cheek from roughhousing with Scott that morning, and gazes up as far as he can see, until the top of the tower seems to be swallowed by the darkness of the night. From the open window at the top, from behind the violet silken drapes, he thinks he sees a flash of fiery red, and he thinks he can hear her crying. 

Climbing up the tower bloodies his fingers and heels and tears off the tips of his chewed-down nails, and he does not look down, although his heart is surely plummeting in that direction now, the further up he gets. At last, his scraped-up palm clamps around the window sill, and, with a great groan, he hauls himself up and pitches through the opening. 

He hears a gasp: her gasp. As he rights himself, as his eyes find her bare feet on the velvet evergreen rug, as they rake up her powder blue gown and alight upon her wild red hair, braided with golden threads and autumn leaves and mountain flowers, as her pale eyes lock with his and a flush creeps onto her cheeks, he hears a wolf howl outside, far, far away. 

"How dare you," she finally says, only a breath – all of the screaming silences her true voice, he is sure. "I could behead you where you lay if I so wished. I ought to." 

"Pray do not," Stiles splutters, scrambling to his feet. "I quite like my head." 

Lydia’s eyes narrow, and her lips purse, and Stiles is unsure about what to do with the leaping sensation in his stomach at the sight of her soft, lightly freckled skin illuminated in the oranges from the fireplace, from her many candles. The posts of her bed are carved oak, hewn to look like they are ensconced in ivy. 

"You should not be here on this night," she seems to settle on telling him, her arms going folded at her breasts. "I will be on the roof soon. The ravens and the stoats will come. The Otherworld will open."

"I only—" Stiles swallows. Wipes his palms on his pants. "I missed you."

Lydia hums quietly in her throat. It has been so long since the sun has graced her that her complexion is pallid and her freckles have all but gone, but she is still rich with life, standing like this in her hidden tower, surrounded by wolfsbane and wicks and wisteria. After a moment, she approaches him, her skirt rustling barely on the floor, and Stiles forgets where his heart goes. 

"How very sad," she murmurs. "For you, at least, squire. Simple stable boy. That you should be deprived of me."

Stiles could not agree with her more, but he will not tell her so. His eyes wander to her collarbone, to the gossamer sapphire draped around her shoulders. He wants to pull down her red hair from its carefully crafted braided updo until it tangles in his fingers, but a part of him knows that he will never draw up the courage to touch her. 

"I suppose you’d like to kiss me, wouldn’t you," she says conversationally, analytically. 

Her hand clasps his at the knuckles and slowly brings it up to the space where her hairline meets her earlobe. It quavers, but he keeps it there. 

"I would not be averse," he croaks. And Ladye Lydia leans toward him, slowly, and he closes his eyes, and he does not see the moonlight sheave into the room from the window, but it hits her, and before her mouth can meet his, before he can taste the springtime in her, she has shoved him away, shrieking, wailing, until his skin erupts in goose pimples and his ears begin to ring. 

When he looks up, she is gone, and he follows her up her ladder to the roof and watches from behind as she stands at the edge with her arms spread and the wind pulls her dress up like wings and she screams, pierces the sky through its withered heart, and a howling frigid wind comes to the castle from the mountain passes. 

But Stiles does not know what it is to hear Lydia scream. All his life, when others have clamped their hands over their ears and fallen to their knees in agony at the sound of her, he has stood, reverently, unmoving, agape – because to him, it is the low and eerie sound of singing. 

He walks to meet her at the edge of the tower and holds her hand. Her mouth is wide open and her face is webbed in tears, but she grips him so hard that he cannot feel his fingers, and they watch the sun come up together, as the trees of the forest break and die. 

**Author's Note:**

> prompted on tumblr by wallacerudolphs for my AU askmeme.


End file.
